The Harlequin Man
by Tupper
Summary: One-shot. Fighting a battle of minds, Sirius Black faced more than dementors while imprisoned in Azkaban.


The Harlequin Man  
  
As always when with the closest of friends, the sky was clear and golden, and everyone shined with the reflection of the sun and each other. It was that enviable sort of day where strangers would greet each other on the street with good cheer, settling down to talk over drinks and look at passerby. The soaring moods seemed to push the day to be brighter and lighter, so as to not be outdone by the exceptional spirits.  
  
In the Bouncing Banshee, the good feeling of the day was centered. Butterbeer tankards rapped each other, sounding like bells.  
  
Big Sal, a tall, heavy, merry man; rather like a rough-edged Santa Claus without the holiday trimmings, went around handing mugs. Occasionally, he would break out into songs with bawdy lyrics, and the patrons in the pub would clap along or listen in embarrassed amusement. Sal always sang shamelessly.  
  
On that day of grace, Sal's wicked ballads were directed towards one blushing, laughing group in the corner, its members so tightly clustered together that there was scarce room to breathe. Sal or another poor waiter was constantly plodding 'round to them, laden with drinks. Butterbeer for the youngsters and responsible adults, and firewhisky for the elders who trusted the good examples to be set by someone more mature.  
  
One of those who took the firewhisky was that scarred, unkempt man with cracked, brown nails. Sirius Black flicked his filthy hair over the shoulder of a soiled coat. He seemed not to notice his condition, nor did his comrades. James would have at least mentioned it; he was always poking fun at the man, never missing an opportunity. Sirius drank his firewhisky slowly, as though not accustomed to the taste, or having missed it a long while.  
  
Harry eyed Sirius' bottle, plainly curious. Lily shooed his gaze away before giving a mock-angry look to Sirius, who considered hiding his firewhisky, then thinking better of it drained the rest of it down. Hagrid, his enormous bulk sufficient to take up the corner itself, did hide his liquor, and Harry's eyes passed over it. Sitting across from him, Ron Weasley, Arthur and Molly's son, had had the same interested expression, which was carefully neutralized whenever his mother chanced to look his way. Remus made sure to carry a butterbeer himself, as always responsible.  
  
James looked longingly at the bottle in Sirius' hand, but knew better than to dare anything more than a butterbeer with his wife sitting next to him, and the underage children around. Sal was quite the opposite, slugging down a bottle while calling for more firewhisky for the adults, and bearing the party to another wild song, to which the company could but laugh helplessly. In these fits the pub walls shook. Sal would fly up in a passion of singing, slapping his hands on his nut-brown neck as he did so.  
  
Sirius was entirely comfortable within the mass, heading no mind to his present state of squalor, and laughed heartily along with the others. In the Bouncing Banshee, everything was ten times funnier than it could be anywhere else.  
  
The old Maruaders were dwelling on a topic familiar, and of no limited amusement to them: Severus Snape, whose greasy, oily features were glossed over constantly; and Lily, who so maintained her maturity, could not help but laugh as well.  
  
"Fishnets," said James heartily. "Largo said he saw it, the dog, fishnets for Snape."  
  
Sirius laughed and leaned back heavily in his chair. Largo had spun that story so many times that even he couldn't recall if it was true or not; that he'd really seen Severus Snape sporting a floral skirt and puttering around the prefects' bathrooms. Largo had a flair for exaggeration, and a flair for stumbling into the most bizarre things. Those talents combined made him a very sought-after photographer and article writer for Playwizard. Under no circumstances was he allowed to mention his slightly wanton profession to the young, impressionable, teenaged Harry and Ron; Lily and Molly Weasley no doubt feared that they might beg Largo to share some of the perks of his job.  
  
"Pretty pink with frosty blue flowers," said Largo. "He looked like a birthday cake."  
  
Sirius grinned, wrinkles carving into his face like pox. He hadn't added much to the conversation. His voice was ugly; it was cracked and hoarse, and speaking sent fire down his throat. But he was content.  
  
Paying no mind to Sirius' seeming inability to converse, James engaged him in a few words nonetheless: "Sirius, Padfoot, where's that rat Peter? Did you kill him, Sirius? God knows he killed me."  
  
It caught Sirius completely by surprise and he stared at James with something like to horror on his face, all pleasant feeling gone; but James was perfectly cheery and happy, as was his wife. As was Largo, who'd died gruesomely at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange, that woman who had been beautiful once, but like Sirius, had decayed in features. Largo handed another firewhisky to him.  
  
"God knows I might have killed you," he said, "If I didn't know better. That hag, that woman Lestrange, The Strange? Playwitch of the month, December." Largo slapped Sirius' arm good-naturedly. "But you got the short end of the stick this time, buddy. I was your alibi, and alibis have to be gotten rid of, right? God, you sank without me." He mused a bit, swirling his drink. "I'd always hoped I'd be killed by a beautiful woman."  
  
Sirius looked around at all his friends, shaken. Each of them was looking back at him in puzzled cheer.  
  
"You look like hell, Sirius," said Remus.  
  
Sirius, ashen and nonplussed, tilted his bottle back and gazed bemusedly at his curved reflection. It was the first time he'd taken note of his appearance, and how terrible he looked. His face was tough and stringy, like meat that had been pounded far too long, and his black hair hung like dry pasta. Dry lips looked like old bread. Sirius realized he was hungry. He'd eaten his fill, not to mention had filled up some on drink. And he was still starving.  
  
His pale, drawn skin quickly turned to scarlet, shame and anger flushing his face, adding a color long absent. Without warning, he drew his arm back and threw the bottle with all his might, and it crashed against the pub wall to drop in a thousand pieces. His friends looked surprised at his sudden passion. Ron gaped openly.  
  
"Don't feel bad, Sirius," Lily said, laying a hand on his arm. "It happens to the best." He wrenched his arm away.  
  
"Shut up!" Sirius snapped, furious with himself. "Damn you Grace, shut up!"  
  
His friends obediently faded away.  
  
"AHH!"  
  
He let out a great shout as he felt the flaked, decayed fingers with the stone nails scrabbling dangerously at his unprotected neck. Sirius yelled again and jerked violently out of the hand's grasp as the putrid smell assaulted him, the rotting stench of spoiled flesh nearly bringing him to tears. He swore and recoiled several feet from the iron bars of his cell, out of reach of the groping hand, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve and coughing out the bad taste the smell brought.  
  
The dementor that had arrived there so eagerly was thoroughly displeased at the denial of such an appealing meal. Part of its face was revealed—the horrible, greedy, vile mouth ready to swallow the soul. But the magnetizing waves of joy that had so attracted it had abruptly changed into fear and disgust, and were no longer desirable. Sirius spat out the last of the foul taste and cursed the creature heavily. He imagined that it looked at him balefully, disappointed at his loss, before reluctantly retreating—but only a few yards, in hopes that the prisoner would forget himself again.  
  
Sirius closed his eyes briefly. When next he opened them, he was met by a badly cut stone wall. His feet were chilly—his shoes were ancient and suffered a few holes.  
  
For a few moments he forced his heart to calm; it'd been thumping wildly with the potent mixture of adrenaline and anger. Under a skin of dirt, his hands were white and trembling. He rubbed them together until they stilled, and forced himself to breathe. More so than his hands, his mind was shaking with the pure, amazing reality of it.  
  
It was the first time that he'd allowed himself to go into the illusion so much as to be entirely deluded, and willingly so; he was furious with himself for having allowed it to happen. That was the whole point of it, deception.  
  
"Had your laugh, now?" he said crossly into the silence. Whatever strength that was left in his voice had been lessened considerably by yelling.  
  
"Yeah," came the reply in deep baritones, ringing in the hall. "I'm glad the dementor didn't get you."  
  
"Would ruin your fun, would it?" Sirius said nastily.  
  
"You didn't seem to mind."  
  
Sirius had no reply to that. There was a slight sound of scuffling as the man, in the cell across from Sirius and to the right, shifted his position. "You could at least thank me," he said, breaking the short quiet. "I've liberated you from this place. There might as well not be any bars."  
  
"I don't like being tricked." Sirius wasn't sure why he was bothering to argue. It'd been so long since he'd really talked to anybody. The loneliness was an incredible pressure.  
  
"You let me. You knew it wasn't real. You wanted to be tricked." The man spoke almost childishly.  
  
Sirius allowed himself to lift his head and look at the speaker. Black eyes gazed malevolently back, almost daring. Sirius sighed. Andrew Grace was the sort of person that liked to skirt the edge, seeing how far he could push people before he went too far. He almost had, just then.  
  
He'd been there for five years so far, as opposed to Sirius' three, and yet Grace's features were still maintaining their integrity, while Sirius' were progressively worsening. Grace still claimed an undeserved sort of handsomeness that didn't suit him well; like skin hanging off bone, his looks clung to him with an unreasonable fervor. It was a cold, inappropriate beauty that had both attracted and repulsed women in Grace's life.  
  
Andrew Grace was a young man, not much older than twenty-five, if that; he did not show the remorse that some other men his age had for their less offensive crimes. Indeed, Grace had committed horrific acts of torture and murder, having driven exactly thirteen innocents to such insanity that they had driven hammers and curses into their skulls in a desperate effort to drive the maddening hallucinations from their minds.  
  
It was an odd ability that he'd been born with, the gift of illusion, the ability to create a tangible reality with as little effort as it took to think. Parents, doctors, and guidance counselors had all encouraged him to use that gift for the betterment of society—it was the only real way that doctors would be able to communicate with those in comas: create a separate existence in which the patient's capacities were not hindered by their comatose states.  
  
Or Grace could have been a dazzling Auror—fooling Dark wizards, trapping them in their own minds, rendering them completely helpless as they wandered through an illusion. Or a psychologist: what better way to analyze a patient than put them into imagined situations and observe reactions?  
  
But there was a problem with these professions: Andrew Grace derived little entertainment from them. In his own mind, his talent required a degree of artistry that would be sorely lacking if he were to listen to his parents and guides. It was an ability that shouldn't be harnessed by the confines of his employment. And so, much to the disappointment and growing horror of family and friends, he began to experiment with his own ways of using illusion.  
  
At first, he'd experimented with being a harmless con artist, but quickly discovered that swindling money did not satisfy him. His first real project was Nancy Eggins, an eighty-year-old-woman in Liverpool who had lost her husband during the terrifying reign of the dark wizard Grindelwald. Every night, in her dreams, she would see him, embrace him, and wake up without him. Her pillow would be damp, and her eyes would close when she looked at the other side of the bed, that lay empty and forlorn.  
  
Grace met her in the apothecary on Diagon Alley, when elderly Mrs. Eggins was picking up a prescription medicine. She was remarkably independent given her age, not requiring assistance in moving around. They fell into conversation, and through Grace's smooth prompting, Mrs. Eggins told him the story of her late husband and brother in her soft, fragile voice. Grace immediately became engrossed. It was common, from then on, for him to become infatuated with the lives of his victims.  
  
The very next morning, when Mrs. Eggins turned to look at the empty side of her bed again, as she did every morning since his death, she saw her husband, young and beautiful as ever; unblemished and perfect. Mrs. Eggins had wept and forcefully told herself to wake up, but she wasn't dreaming. Her husband was there, right beside her, with color in his face, but it wasn't right—  
  
This went on for three weeks: Mrs. Eggins would see her husband there before her, and he would take her in his arms; and then he was gone, vanished with no traces. Her friends quickly deserted her, fearing her mad when she cried to them that her dearest husband had returned, leaving the poor woman distraught and confused. And one day, her husband disappeared as if he'd never been there. Her mind became so tangled and her logic so twisted that one day she took the smooth, soft sheets from her bed, tied them to the bed post, wrapped the other end around her neck, and gently eased herself out her bedroom window, facing away from the street.  
  
Many more followed: a younger woman whose daughter had drowned years before; a man who had been cheating on his doting wife; a teenager with low self-esteem; and more of the type—Grace exploited them, made them happy, and then took that happiness away, leaving his victims shell-shocked and touching insanity. They killed themselves in a desperate attempt to make it all go away.  
  
Such were the sins of Andrew Grace.  
  
However, there was one thing that he'd never done, or even so much as attempted to do...and that was to use the power of illusion on himself. There wasn't any problem of not being able to convince himself of its reality, it was that he didn't dare to fall under the same spell that he'd brought others to destruction under. He knew better than to fall into his own traps—and so the dementors let him be. Grace managed to keep his sanity in much the same way as Sirius, except that Andrew was by no means innocent.  
  
Sirius sagged in his cell. He'd been able to fight off the illusions until then, keep his head...but it'd all seemed so real. Little by little, Grace had manipulated his way into knowing how to push Sirius, how to put his mind into inexorable confusion and pathetic helplessness. Sirius was hotly ashamed of himself for letting the little weasel get to him, and the following rush of anger cooled his nerves. It was easier when he was able to focus on his fury.  
  
Grace started absently tapping a rhythm on the bars. The notes clanked noisily through the echoing hall and Sirius had to jam his ears. He wished powerfully that he could revert into his canine form, but dogs had a better sense of hearing and the notes would bear more heavily than ever. Finally, Sirius grabbed a small rock that had broken off the wall and launched it as hard as he could, getting satisfaction when Grace swore foully as the rock grazed his head. For a while, the tapping stopped.  
  
"You could thank me, you know," Grace said sullenly. "I can free you from this stinking place."  
  
"Why not turn it on yourself?" Sirius said acidly. "Tell me, if your intentions are so noble, why not use your tricks to fool yourself?"  
  
Grace didn't answer at first. Then: "I could if I wanted to." He sounded like a pouting child. "I just don't. And what would I imagine, anyway?" His words were tinged with an ugly bitterness.  
  
Sirius didn't bother to argue further. He was exhausted in every sense of the word, and the weariness tugged his eyelids down. In another cell, Andrew Grace fought a private battle.  
  
Some time later, Sirius was awoken by a scream—one that chilled the bones for the brief second that it existed, before it was cut sharply off and bounced off the rock walls before settling. He immediately shoved himself away from the bars of his cage, lest the dementors were there, reaching their rotted hands for him. But none were there—he chanced a look out of his cell, and was stone-faced at what he saw.  
  
Five, no six, a dozen dementors were swarmed around the cell of Andrew Grace. They jostled each other violently, decaying hands scrabbling wildly in the cell. It was like vultures feasting on carrion. Finally they drew back, disappointed, except for one, who held a tight grip with its arms. Finished with his meal, he let Andrew Grace drop to the floor and floated away. The other dementors looked hopefully at the shell for a moment, but its life and light was gone, and denied once again of a feast, they drifted off to sulk.  
  
Grace had done what he never wanted—he'd gone and made himself happy. He'd caught himself in his illusion too close to the bars, within reach of the dementors' grasp. The shell puttered aimlessly around the cell, until some guards finally came for it. Without hesitation, one struck it with a knife, and the body collapsed, its physical link to the world gone. The soul had already departed long before.  
  
Sirius rested his head against the wall, and drew his threadbare coat more tightly around himself.  
  
Hmm, this was rather dark for me. I like how it turned out, but I don't want to make a habit of writing things so depressing :( It was a little short, too, but I didn't want it to be long, and I wanted the ending to be brief, so it'll have to do. Besides, if it were any longer, it'd have taken me months to churn out. I'm slow as a snail, and I have the remarkable ability to get writer's block twice a paragraph. Bats.  
  
Next I think I'll do something lighter—not domestic, but sort of fun. I've already got an idea :P Hopefully I'll get it out before the next millennium, huh? 


End file.
